This might sound odd (have you met me?) but every night before bed and every morning before I leave for work I turn the living room TV on for the pets. I just think that they need a little noise or something to keep them company during the night. Sure they should be sleeping but still: I believe that they like it. After all, I like having the radio on all night so I wake up to sound. Why shouldn’t they? And if we are all leaving for the day, this way they still have human sounds or something to keep them company.
Of course there has to be an issue with this, because depending on who is the last one to bed or the last one out the door in the morning, the channel can be changed by someone else. We didn’t used to have this problem, because we’d set the TV on “Soundscapes”, soothing New-Age music and nature sounds. What cat or little dog wouldn’t like that?
But after a while, when Kitty started putting it on that channel all the time when she was home: well, this really started to grate on my nerves. It made me feel lazy and sleepy. So then I’d put it on the Easy Listening channel, which was light and mild but wouldn’t put the pets into a catatonic state.
This worked for a while, but then Brie decided the pets needed something to perk them up. So that meant: the hip-hop channel! No worries about any sleeping during this! She wouldn’t do it at night, but when she’d leave the house so the pets could “cat daddy”, apparently. But this drove Kitty nuts so she’d scowl and put it back on Soundscapes.
I really love old-school jazz, like Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Art Tatum and Billy Strayhorn. On the weekends I get to listen to a lot of this jazz, so I started leaving the TV on the Real Jazz station so the pets could listen to what I’d be listening to in my room. The girls respected this so I figured I had won; then Sunday mornings before church I’d turn to the Daystar channel so the pets could have some religion. (Lord knows they need Jesus.) Or if I was doing “church at home”, I’d turn the radio on to the Moody Bible station so we could listen live to the services at the Moody Bible Church in Chicago. I really think they like when I do that because I’ll sit in the living room with them, and they’d gather around (Pumpkin with the place of honor in my lap, of course) so we could enjoy what Erwin Lutzer was preaching about. The bonus was that the girls would usually still be in bed so it was just me and my furry friends.
Both girls do not like if I leave the TV on TNT in the morning when “Charmed” is on. I just love that show, or at least the first 2 seasons when Shannon Doherty was up there. I still watch the reruns if I’m home. But they don’t think the pets should watch a show that has witches in it, so as soon as someone else gets up they immediately turn it.
This morning I happened to turn to Classic VH1. One of my favorite old videos, “Dude Looks Like a Lady” was on. I just love Aerosmith! Especially Joe Perry: the best thighs in rock! After that they showed KISS’s classic “Rock ‘N Roll All Night” and hey: who doesn’t still drool over Paul Stanley?? So that was the channel I left it on for the pets to enjoy. Sure it’s unusual for videos nowadays to actually be playing on a music channel, so I thought it would be good for the pets to see and enjoy the same videos I enjoyed in the 80’s and early 90s J.
Now that I think of it, I wonder why we go to so much trouble to make sure the pets have human sounds. They sleep upstairs anyway! It’s just another example of how we try to humanize our pets. As if they don’t already think they’re people…
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